CHIWERE etymology

[Koontz John E]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2000, Alan H. Hartley wrote:
> Jimm and John, do you think it might be possible to reach a fairly
> high-confidence consensus between your etymological suggestions? And
> John, I was interested in the Dhegiha/Chiwere parallels.

I'll see what I can cook up.  I haven't heard from Jim.  I thought I was
pretty well on track with take 2.

Jimm added:

A more exact rendition is "(we/I) go from here":  The term for "here"  is
usually "igi/ jegi" or some derivation [See p.161, IOMDict].  "je/ jegi"
signifies "here/ right here/ at" thus suggesting this place right here.

John:

=gi (the = just marking an enclitic boundary) is 'at' (the locative
postposition), which is =gi in Chiwere and Winnebago, vs. =di in OP and =l
~ =tu in Dakotan.  The Chiwere and Winnebago forms are cognate with each
other, as are the Dhegiha and Dakotan ones, but the two sets (*ki and *tu)
are not cognate with each other.  i- is either a raised version of e= or
just i 'it', which tends to replace e= in Chiwere and Winnebago.  I've
never felt that I knew which was happening or in which degree both were
happening. So igi and j^egi are analogs of OP edi, dhedi and Teton el,
lel.  All these forms are the generic demonstrative (it, that
aforementioned) and the proximal demonstrative (this) combined with a
locative postposition.

This said, I think that the gi in j^egiwere probably isn't that locative
postposition gi, though I could be wrong, because Chiwere has its own
rules, and it is true that locative and other case forms of demonstratives
tend to replace and/or augment simple demonstrative forms, in Siouan and
elsewhere, cf.  English this here, that there; French ceci, cela; or just
plain English yonder (directional) for yon.

Jimm:

Also, there is "jira'ra= here & there", however, it appears the first that
"ji-" is contracted from "j(eg)i".

John:

I'd expect this form to be 'begins, starts, occurs in this direction
repeatedly', one of those 'suddenly' auxiliaries, for which 'here and
there' is not that unreasonable an English translation.  The first is too
precise for ordinary use.  It may define the semantics, but it's
unworkable as a translation in context. The j^i there would normally be
the verb of motion, i.e., j^i 'to arrive here'.  The next part is the
positional, but in these constructions there's a special 'moving'
positional homophonous with 'to go', i.e., re, and since it's reduplicated
(to create the iterative, distributive sense), that re becomes rara
(change of vowel normal in reduplication).  So j^ire (matches OP thidhe)
reduplicates to j^irara (matches OP thidhadha).

The Dakotan forms would be hiya and hiyaya, which are used only as verbs
of motion.  The OP forms are used in context to mean 'to suddenly (and
repeatedly) do ...', sort of like saying 'he went and ...' in English.  I
have the impression that Chiwere, and to some extent Winnebago, work the
same as Dhegiha in this respect.  Dakota has only a few frozen forms of
this nature.

Of course, in Siouan languages you can't just say 'go' or 'went'
(specifying time, something irrelevant in Siouan), you have to specify
some other things so this is 'arriving here (j^i), moving (re) repeatedly
(reduplication or re)' or 'by fits and starts in this direction, stopping
finally here', 'here and there (on the way hither)' etc.

Jimm:

John suggested another possibility, indeed, that "ji" is the verb "to
arrive here".  And while IOM, as do other Siouian languages, use several
motion verbs together, this does not seem to be the case here.

John:

Agreed; the j^egiwere variant showed me the error of my ways!

Jimm:

"wa-" is a directional prefix indicating the action moves away from/ to a
third point.  There is another prefix "wa-", which is rendered as
"something" and may convert verbs to noun.  Each of these prefixes have
different positions in the verb complex.

John:

Jimm, this is something I'm unfamiliar with.  Do you have some examples?

Jimm:

"re" = "to go"; "ire'" = "to go across"; "hire'" = "go away/ depart/
leave/ arrive going";

John:

These are motion verbs and motion verb compounds, from re 'to go', i 'to
come', hi 'to arrive there'.  The compounds tend to be rendered 'to
cross', 'to pass', etc., and this is done consistently enough that I think
it reflects the lexical sense of the verbs, and not just some convenient
nonce English equation.  The more analytic translations like 'coming here
and going there' or 'arriving there and going there' => 'arrive (there)
going (somewhere else)' help show how the more limited meanings arose.

Jimm:

"ware'" = "go from/ go towards"; "gawa're" = "go to there"; "iwa're" = "go
from here/ go to specified place".

John:

I guess these are the wa forms Jimm was mentioning.  I'll have to ponder
them.  Initially, I don't think that wa here would meet the needs of we in
j^egiwere ~ j^iwere, because the vowel is different without any
explanation of why.

If anyone is still listening at this point, does anyone have comments on
those wa-forms?